Search This Blog

Watandost in Urdu, Turkish and Farsi means "friend of the nation or country". The blog contains news and views about Pakistan and broader South West Asia that are insightful but are often not part of the headlines. It also covers major debates in Muslim societies across the world.

Knowledge as Criterion of Personal
Distinction: A
person is worth what he excels at; your superiority over others is in
proportion to the extent of your knowledge and wisdom.[i]

Education and Leadership: Whoever wants to be a leader should
educate himself before educating others.[ii]Theory and Practice: Theoretical as well as practical
knowledge are the best signs of distinction; deep thinking will present the
clearest picture of every problem.[iii]

On the Need for Studying History: Learn lessons from past events in order to understand and prepare for
future events, because they are similar to one another; and study how nations
are similar in their states and traits.[iv]
Studying the causes of the rise and fall of civilizations is a critical means
to acquire knowledge.[v]

Legacy of Scholars: Scholars live forever. They disappear
only in physical image, but in the hearts and minds of people, their memories
and messages last forever.[vi]

Linkage Between Knowledge and Practice: Knowledge and its practice must go
hand in hand. Whoever is knowledgeable must act. Knowledge calls upon action;
if answered, it will remain, but otherwise, it will disappear.[vii]

Education
Process: Education involves the observation of events, learning lessons from
history, and acquiring wisdom through thinking and analysis.[viii]

Specialized Training:
Administrative officials of the government cannot serve efficiently without
proper education and training.[ix]

Benefits
of Education: He who acts without knowledge is like the one
who is without direction. Consequently, his objectives remain unachieved. But
the one who is well educated and well informed treads a clear path. Lack of education hinders one’s capacity to
comprehend. Knowledge arms an individual to face the dangers of life.[x]

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Inside Story about Musharraf-Mahmood TussleHassan Abbas: September 24, 2006

General Pervez Musharraf’s memoir In the Line of Fire is expected to generate a lot of debate and discussion in the days to come. Except some western journalists and Musharraf’s close friends (three ghost writers) hardly anyone has had a chance yet to read the book from cover to cover. The excerpts of the book leaked through Indian media and General Musharraf’s statements to some American media outlets however have already created some controversies. In the United States, controversy is considered a positive thing, so the book is bound to become a bestseller here, but in Pakistan probably the opposite is true.

This article is not a review of the book (as I haven’t got hold of a copy yet), but it endeavors to throw some light on the widely reported Musharraf comment about the Armitage threat conveyed through Lieutenant General Mahmood Ahmed, the then Director General of the ISI. I had done research on this speci…

FAISALABAD: Chief Justice of Pakistan Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry has said that a society can progress only if it ensures the supremacy of the Constitution, which guarantees the rights of every citizen and defines roles for organs of the state.

Addressing the Faisalabad Bar Association on Sunday, the chief justice said that the separation of the judiciary from the executive was vital and only a free judiciary could provide real justice. He quoted a saying of Hazrat Ali, the fourth caliph of Islam, that a “society can survive with kufr (infidelity), but not injustice”.

“Every citizen must follow the Constitution. A society can progress only if it has supremacy of the Constitution,” peace and rule of law, he said. “We cannot get rid of the label of developing country without ensuring the security of the life and property of citizens,” he said.

As expected, the government of Saudi Arabia has refused to lift the ban on Pakistanis below the age of 40 years from performing umra. It was futile on the part of federal religious affairs minister Mohammad Ejazul Haq to visit Riyadh to try and make the Saudis change their mind on the issue. The Saudis formulate their policies after much thinking and in line with their national interest and decisions once taken are rarely changed.

Back home, Ejazul Haq sounded defensive when he told reporters that the ban would stay because the Saudi government had complained that over 100,000 Pakistanis had overstayed in Saudi Arabia after reaching there on the pretext of performing umra. Before leaving for Saudi Arabia, he had expressed concern over the Pakistan-specific umra restriction and had promised to take up the matter with the Saudi authorities. One could understand that he was on a weak wicket and could only request the Saudis…